Hiding a particular user's observations in Identify

This doesn’t work when using the app. Which I frequently use to ID when away from the computer.

Why is it not a good idea to message them? I have nearly no social awareness unfortunately

I tried the string suggested but it returned an error page. My guess is that I need to enter the user’s numerical ID, not their username. Is that so?

my bad, that string is only if you already have some filters on, otherwise use ‘?’ instead of ‘&’.
You can use this link: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?not_user_id=jonsense and replace my user name with the one you don’t want to see.

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Oooh the “?” was the trick. I used “&” earlier. Thank you!

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(First: let’s not debate the motives — like you I can see reasons for wanting to hide users’ contributions, e.g. someone with an enduring habit of blurry photos, or dropping thousands of ‘unknowns’, or…)

Filtering by “unwanted user” + increasing per_page to 200 + marking everything as ‘reviewed’ certainly does the job with removing existing observations from sight, but… it has to be repeated every now and then, as soon as the “unwanted user” adds new “unwanted observations”. Not very proactive, not very convenient: one has to remember to constantly and correctly add “&not_user_id=Alice,Bob” in the URLs.

A general setting like this would go a long way. For example, it could take the form of an option in one’s profile “Hide these users from Identify and Observations views:”, with a list of unwanted users to hide for some duration (permanently until manually removed, or for n days, or for the lifetime of the cookie - a month?)… without resorting to hard blocking, a function intended to mitigate abuse if I understand correctly.

If there’s interest, and not already in the works, I could prepare a Feature Request to this avail?

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I like this better than the blocking option. This way, I think, is easier and less, well, mean.

I’m not a social expert by any means either but i know i would not react in a positive manner if someone told me they were blocking me because they didn’t like my observations (and even if you don’t say it that way, it seems to be the case). I know people block me either because they don’t like my observations (i do take road ones and such, but try to make them identifiable) or because of my views on taxonomy, but i don’t want or need to be told I’ve been blocked. Really we should have much more options to block or mute but in absense of that… we just do what we can i guess.

i guess all i can say is the app has very limited functionality for anything other than making observations, running the algorithm, and uploading them. I didn’t even know blocking applied to the app!

Anyway i agree the ability to exclude users from queries such as ID would be ideal. Same as how collection projects can include a genus but then exclude specific species of that genus you don’t want included

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I see. I somehow hadn’t thought about this, probably because I believe I wouldn’t feel negatively about someone blocking me because they didn’t like my observations

For now I’m opting to exclude this user’s observations with the search string mentioned above

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I try to comment on those landscape shots and ask people to submit close ups instead. But there needs to be a better solution to that.

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Submit a feature request
for a new DQA to push out of Needs ID
Landscape / Vegetation type / Habitat

It is a legitimate obs for the observer.

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I really encourage you not to do this if the target observation is in the photo. There are a lot of reasons people might only do landscape shots. Please just click reviewed and move on. If a user does a lot of it and you don’t like it, exclude them from your IDs using the filters mentioned here. You can also create a project for users you want to do IDs for and use that to filter your ID help. I’ve done that with a few users I do a lot of IDs for and it’s a good way to focus in, and then you can add people in and out of the project as time goes on. The downside is it doesn’t help new or casual users.

If the individual organism isn’t in the photo at all, then you wouldn’t ID it as that, you’d do a disasgreeing ID to higher level or just skip it. If it’s there but it’s just small and you don’t like that type of observation you just click reviewed an move on. There isn’t a data quality issue there.

Examples:

-Someone posts a ‘Eastern White Pine’ observation. You see a tree in the distance, it’s blurry, but it is clearly eastern white pine, a very distinctive species. Your options are to click ‘agree’ or to ignor ethe observation.

-Someone posts an ‘Eastern White Pine’ but you can’t see any organism, it’s a total blur. You mark it as ‘no evidence of organism’.

-Someone posts an Eastern White Pine and you see a hemlock but no pines at all. It seems the user thought the hemlock was a pine. You identify as hemlock.

If you’re really set on harassing or nagging users for blurry or vehicle-based photos please read this journal post and consider not doing it any more.

https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/charlie/74717-please-don-t-harass-people-over-blurry-photos-or-photos-taken-from-vehicles

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I’m more referring to pictures of a landscape where it is ID as Canada goose (a real example from just this week) there is no goose in site. There is something in the lake very far off you can’t tell whether it is a living being or a object. So I suggested that person submit a close up if they want it ID and then just ID it as life.

if they were attempting to photograph a goose, i still don’t think you should. Please read my journal post before you do at least. I think it’s absolutely fine to say ‘there aren’t enough diagnostic features to determine which species of waterfowl in this photo’ but in my opinion we should not be telling people to get out of the car, take closer photos, etc, just because they post something like this. In the very least it isn’t going to cause anything positive to happen.

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I will read your journal post, but I’m not suggesting anyone get out of their car. A mere cropping of the picture would be sufficient to at least show what they are trying to ID. I have submitted many observations where I have a landscape picture but then also have a close-up (via duplicating and then cropping the picture) of what I want people to identify.

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i think the best path to people cropping photos would be to add that functionality to the app and website. Otherwise it becomes a huge time burden and frankly, i’m not usually going to do it so i doubt others will either. It would be really neat to have a sort of internal crop feature that lets you ‘tag’ the target organism like you can tag faces in Facebook, and also allow you to click on it to zoom in. Annotations of key features would be neat too. But, this is getting off topic for sure.

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Tagging within a picture would be great!
I did notice that the iPhone app doesn’t let you edit pictures but Android does. I can crop my photos, lighten them or darken them, duplicate with just the click or a button. The android app is really great, I honestly prefer it over using the website to upload anything.

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oh wow, that does sound really valuable. I don’t think that exists in iNat Next yet. I hope they add it. along with ability to swipe left and right to review observations before uploading. I don’t have an android phone and haven’t for ages so didn’t even realize that app had those capabilities.

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Oh yes the android has that feature as well. I swipe right to look through my pictures before I click submit.


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can you swipe from one observation to another? i am hoping to swipe through the observations themselves. I think all apps let you swipe through the photos?

Yes I can swipe to the next observation.

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